"Oh, they're over there, talking to Mary and Beldegar."
"In a group consisting of Sithis, Travok, Anastrianna and Kairon, the human fighter named Bob II sticks out. Especially when he's identical to Bob I, who was killed by kobolds."
— 4th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, Dungeons & Dragons
In some fantasy settings, people have names that you would expect to see in real life. In others, names are made up to sound exotic.
And then you have the mixed approach: people named Zelor and Lithnara alongside people named James and Catherine. That's this trope.
Don't expect the characters to acknowledge the distinction. Note that this doesn't count if the author is making a distinction e.g. as a Translation Convention for different cultures (cf. The Lord of the Rings, where the hobbits' and the nearby Men's Westron-language names are "translated" as more real-world ones, but no others are), or in a cosmopolitan setting where characters might be reasonably expected to have diverse cultural backgrounds without this necessarily being explicitly stated. This is very prevalent in fantasy settings, as those settings have less of a real-life grounding, facilitating the existence of a cultural melting pot.
In stories set in The Future, new names can be assumed to have been invented or become popular over the years, while older names would still exist alongside them. Can also happen within an Overly Long Name, where a Muggle-type name is liable to appear amid a long series of archaic names. Most often, the "normal" name is "Terry", "Scott", "Dave", "Steve", "Lyle", or "Kevin", because those names are somehow inherently funny. Sometimes happens accidentally in a cast full of Aeriths if an author finds a name from another language that sounds exotic to them, since it will inevitably sound like a Bob to viewers from the culture it comes from. It can also happen if the writer has created a Fantastic Naming Convention that happens to produce something familiar occasionally; if one culture has people called Zib, Gug, Mav, and Dod, then they might well also have a Bob, who only sticks out from the audience's perspective.
Because of the nature of this trope, it has at least two types, both of which are based on the name's realistic usability.
- Commonness: How much a character's name is used in real life (e.g. Eudora and James Rogers, from The Princess and the Frog).
- Conventionality: How acceptable a character's name is to be used in real life (e.g. Hiccup Haddock III and Astrid Hofferson, from How to Train Your Dragon).
The Trope Namer is a combination of Final Fantasy VII—which has the eponymous "Aerith" alongside names like "Vincent" and "Barret"—and a play on Alice and Bob.
Truth in Television examples have existed in real life. See every mostly non-Christian nation with missionaries and a mix of short Christian names and non-Christian ones. In history, in late 16th century and early 17th century England, for men at least, the typical names existed alongside ones like Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned (undoubtedly nicknamed something for convenience by his peers and parents).
Not to be confused (or transliterated) with Alice and Bob. When it's played for laughs, it's an Odd Name Out. See also Special Person, Normal Name. May be subverted by "Bob" being short for "Beelzebob." Compare Melting-Pot Nomenclature, Sesquipedalian Smith, Wacky Americans Have Wacky Names and My Friends... and Zoidberg. One of the names may be a Real Joke Name — for extra laughs, it might be "Bob". If it's about judging the conventionality of someone's given name, see Who Names Their Kid "Dude"? and His Name Really Is "Barkeep".
Example Subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Fan Works
- Films — Animation
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
Other Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- Liberty Mutual's mascots are Those Two Guys, Limu Emu and Doug.
- The now-defunct Mills Corporation, an owner of several U.S. malls, had a kids' club called Muggsy's Meadow. Its mascots included Muggsy Beaver, Carl Raccoon, Lilly Spider and Tred Opossum. All four even got their own cartoon, Get Muggsy!.
- The mascots of Cinnamon Toast Crunch were originally three bakers: Wendell, Bob and… Quello.
Asian Animation
- Agent Ali: The young male Neuro Agent (from outside Malaysia), is named Sam. while most other agents have names from the Malay language. Justified, as the character isn't Malaysian.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: As far as the English names are concerned, we have some names like Weslie, Paddi, and Tibbie that might be spelled differently but are otherwise normal human names, then there's Sparky whose name is more of a nickname but also normal. The wolves have less normal names; Wolffy can at least be explained by the fact that he's a wolf, and Wilie could be easily taken to mean "Willy" (and indeed, is pronounced as such in one of the dubbed seasons). Then there's Slowy, whose name is used as a surname in Germany, though quite rarely. Then there's Wolnie, which is such an uncommon name and surname that it's probably fully associated with this series.
Comic Books
- Named Atlanteans in Aquaman (1989) include Wexel, Pletus... and Jared.
- Artesia features the titular Artesia and her brothers Stepjan and Justin. There are characters named Wallis, Owen, and Colin, along with Daemander, Argante, and Branimir.
- Bob The Monitor from Countdown to Final Crisis.
- DC Comics Atlantean names can vary, usually leaning towards Aerith with a bit of Bob. You have Orin, Orm, Atlan, Atlanna, Orvax, Vulko, Tula, Kaldur, Bres, Mera, Tusky, Topo, La'gaan, and... Garth.
- Future Foundation has this due to the Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink cast consisting of humans, aliens, androids, mole men and fish people. The main crew consists of Alex and Julie Power, Bentley, Artie Maddricks, Dragon Man, Adolf Impossible, Korr, Leech, Mik, Onome, Tong, Turg, Vil, Wu and Yondu Udonta.
- Invincible has this with the Viltrumites. Some have human-like names such as Nolan, Anissa, Randee, and Bernarrd (even Kregg can read like "Craig")note , and then you have ones like Thragg and Vidor, which sound more like noises than names.
- Parodied in MAD's movie satire of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In it, Professor Dumbledore shows Harry the portraits of previous headmasters, including Pontavius Pudfuncher, Agglethrudis Benevolent, Quentock Ticonderoga Kurdlesoup,... and Joe Smith. He never really fit in.
- The Okay Witch: The three witches in Sarah's order that survived their forced immigration out of Europe were her — Sarah — Jenny, and Adelais.
- Scion had an "anything goes" approach to names- for example, two evil princes named Bron and Kort and their White Sheep sister Ashleigh.
- Star Wars Tales: Issue #17 Lunch Break introduces the stormtrooper friends Kjazhed-Uhl and Bob. But then post-clone Stormtroopers are recruited from many worlds, including colonies settled from multiple sources, so it's to be expected.
- Most of the names in the Super Agent Jon Le Bon! are pretty normal, such as Jon, Henry, Martha, etc. But then there's Wxt. The author just put several cool-sounding letters together and his friend decided that that combination would be the one. Jon makes fun of him for it.
- Superman:
- Some Kryptonian given names are strange, more often for men than for women. Women: Kara, Lara, Faora. Men: Kal (as in Kal-El) and Dru (as in General Dru-Zod) resemble Cal and Drew, but Jor (as in Jor-El)? 'El' and 'Zod' are family names. Thus Jor-El named his son Kal. Unmarried women took their father's full name so Supergirl's Kryptonian name, in full, was Kara Zor-El. Superman's mother was Lara Lor-Van until she married Jor-El, but it's not clear if she then became Lara Jor-El or just Lara El. Faora was Faora Hu-Ul while Zod was General Dru-Zod.
- In Supergirl Special, Kara's memories show a Kryptonian girl called Elsa, an English-sounding name. It fits the "two syllables ending in '-a'" pattern of most female Kryptonian names, but it still looks odd because it's so familiar.:
- Ultimate X-Men (2001): All mutants, heroes and villains alike, have a "mutant name". Magneto, Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Quicksilver, Blob, Mastermind... and then there's Jimmy Hudson, who uses his name and no alias whatsoever. Well, perhaps just "Jimmy" instead of "James", but it isn't the same thing.
- Wizards of Mickey: Mickey, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pete keep their mundane names, while original characters have "fantasy-style" names like Nereus and Fafnir.
- Wonder Woman (1987): In the Pre-Crisis continuity the Amazons of Paradise Island were women from throughout history who had come to the island seeking refuge and chose to take an oath to uphold the Amazons' peaceful protective ways then drank from the Fountain of Youth and survived ingesting the dangerous water so their names were incredibly varied, including Althea, Diana, Fatsis, Gerta, Hippolyta, Mala, Metala, Orana, Sophia and Zoe.
- In one issue of Phil Foglio's Xxxenophile, a quartet of goddess statues in a museum come to life and introduce themselves to the museum guard: Okaraska, Boolatraaca, Xynotreen, and Trixie.
Comic Strips
- A literal example: Garfield once met three rats named Rip, Juanita, and—yes—Bob.
- A classic newspaper comic strip's supporting cast includes Fritzi, Sluggo, Rollo, and Oona Goosepimple. The character after whom the strip is named? "Nancy."
- In Peanuts, Snoopy's brothers are named Spike, Marbles, Olaf…and Andy. There's also a minor character named "5".
Myths & Religion
- Arthurian Legend tends to suffer from mixed anglicisation and the later addition of Knights by French and English. Thus popular and important knights, like Drystan, are frequently changed into Tristan, while less popular ones kept the old Welsh form like Culhwch. Making things even worse is when there are characters added later with no Welsh roots, like Galahad and Lancelot who suddenly are thrown into to interact with the Welsh Knights without any comment on how their name sounds odd since the ones who initially added them to the story didn't speak Welsh and figured they'd be fine As Long as It Sounds Foreign.
- The Bible:
- Due to the massive widespread, it was inevitable that a lot of the Hebrew names contained within would gain use in other languages. However, not every name. This can lead to interesting passages in the Bible detailing people whose names are either very familiar or foreign-sounding, not because they have different roots - in fact, they all have the same roots - but because some of them have been used and some haven't.
- Jacob had thirteen children with four women, going by the names Judah, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Dinah... Dan, Joseph, Reuben, Simeon (a form of Simon), Levi, and Benjamin. This also varies on the culture. In Finland, for example, Dan and Benjamin are exotic.
- Job has three daughters named Jemima, Kezia... and Kerenhappuch.
- The kings of the Kingdom of Israel: Saul, Ishbosheth, David, and Solomon. Saul and Solomon might have not been that common, but when was the last time you know a guy named Ishbosheth?
- Of the names of the kings of the separated kingdoms of Israel and Judah, only Zechariah and, to a lesser extent, Josiah, Asa, and Hezekiah have caught on in modern English. A few others are pretty popular in modern-day Israel (e.g., Menahem, Omri), but everything else (e.g., Rehoboam, Shallum) are obscure.
- The names for the Messiah in the Book of Isaiah take this to an extreme. The first is Immanuel. The rest? Shearjashub, Mahershalalhashbaz, and Pelejoezelgibborabiadsarshalom.
- In the apocryphal Book of Enoch the names of the leaders of the Grigori are given as Shemihazah, Arteqoph, Remashel, Kokabel, Armumahel, Ramel, Ziqel, Baraqel, Asael, Hermani, Matarel, Ananel, Setawel, Samshiel, Sahriel, Tummiel, Turiel, Yamiel, Yehadiel... and Daniel.
- The Four Gospels: Of Jesus's main twelve disciples, most have entered common usage: Simon (AKA Peter), Andrew, James, John, Philip, Matthew, Thomas. There's also the uncommon Bartholomew, and Judas, which no one uses anymore. And another Judas, who also went by Jude and Thaddaeus.
- Book of Romans: Paul's letter to the Romans includes greetings to Asyncritus, Phlegon, Patrobas, and Julia.
- The Shahnameh: One of the heroes of the epic has the Western-looking name Sam. His father is Nariman while his son is Zal. Of course, "Sam" in this case isn't short for Samuel, but a native Persian name that means "fire" (another hero has the name Siyavash, which is the Avestan form of the same name).
- Tam Lin: The titular character's true love is either called Margaret or Janet.
Pinball
- Avatar does this with the six Na'vi — Jake, Neytiri, Eytukan, Mo'at, Tsu'vey, and Grace.note
- Big Bang Bar uses the names of the Solar System planets (Mercury, Venus, etc.) to identify bar patron targets... except for Earth, which is named "Pythos" instead.
Podcasts
- The Adventure Zone: Balance: Character names include Magnus, Gundren, Yeemick, Klarg, Brian, and Barry Bluejeans. The spectrum is weighted towards Bob, since NPCs are for the most part named after real people. Lampshaded when Justin mocks Griffin for naming the party's new Halfling roommate "Robbie", and invoked when Griffin changed several of the "Aeriths" to "Bobs" during the first arc, which drew heavily from Lost Mine of Phandelver: Sildar Hallwinter became Barry Bluejeans; Big Bad Nezznar was renamed Magic Brian.
- Hero Club's O Holy Knights has Sir Oren the Peaceful, Sir Dane the Good, Lady Holly the Joyful, and Grumplinus the Harsh. It also has Lady Holly's steed Goosey, Sir Oren's animal companions Beth the moose and Dave the bear, and Grumplinus's greedy troll minion Kevin.
- Kakos Industries generally sticks to Corins, and Stephens, and Haleys — but then there's Melantha.
- The Penumbra Podcast has Peter, Vicky, Omar, Rita, Ramses... Juno, Miasma, and Pilot.
- Trials & Trebuchets gives us fantastic character names like Delnys and Serinepth alongside mundane ones like Bailey and Phillip.
- The central characters of Wooden Overcoats are Rudyard and his sister Antigone. Their names stand out among the other characters, such as Eric, Georgie, Desmond, Jennifer, and Niles.
Professional Wrestling
Puppet Shows
- Jeff Dunham:
- Peanut and Walter are this, full stop.
- Jose and Achmed use an interesting twist:
- To most crowds, both join Peanut as Aerith names.
- To a Spanish crowd, Jose becomes a Bob name. Ditto for Achmed with an Arabic crowd.
- Fraggle Rock has names like Gobo, Mokey, Wembley, and Boober alongside Matt, Red, and John.
- It's a Big Big World: The only residents of the World Tree with normal names are Madge, Bob, and Winslow. Everyone else has names like Snook, Oko, and Ick.
- Mister Rogers' Neighborhood featured King Friday and Queen Sarah. Only played partially straight, as her full (presumably maiden) name was Sarah Saturday.
- One episode of the spin-off Donkey Hodie had Tater Buddies, dolls shaped like potatoes that had names like Percival, Petunia and Petey...and then there was one named Pippy Pointyschnozzle, which isn't exactly a common name in real life.
- The Muppets have names like Sam and Kermit (a real name, if rare) alongside names like Fozzie and Gonzo.
- The Noddy Shop has characters whose names are either human names given to toy and pet characters or descriptive words based on their personality or function. Warloworth Q. Weasel, however, doesn't fall into any of these categories, as his name is unique.
- Oobi features characters with names like Oobi, Kako, Grampu, Maestru, Mamu, Papu, and...Bella.
- Sesame Street: Some of the non-humans have normal names (Oscar, Elmo, etc) while others have made-up names (Narf, Count von Count, etc).
- The names of Jeff Tracy's sons in Thunderbirds are Scott, John, Gordon, Alan... and Virgil. All of them are named after the original US astronauts, the Mercury Seven, but you might know Virgil Grissom better by his nickname: Gus.
- There's also Lady Penelope's manservant: surname, Parker; first name, Aloysius. A mild example, however, as it was never mentioned in the series or movies.
Stand-Up Comedy
- A John Mulaney routine has the comedian surprised to consider which Biblical names are still frequently used in modern English and which were dropped, describing the Scriptures as "a few stories, normally about a guy with a crazy name whose wife has a normal name".
Mulaney: "In that town lives Zepheriuses and his wife Rachel." How come she gets to be Rachel?
Tabletop Games
- Damnation Decade: Every real-world analogue character has a bizarre name, and they're really bizarre, like the authors were pulling random nouns from a hat to generate names (Ampersand Vole, Quantrill Biscuit). The most reasonable-sounding names include Stanton Spobeck's secretary Ethel Ambrose Pratt, host of Beyond the Barrier Herman Purvis, and musician Edmund Fitzgerald, famous for a song about the sinking of the ore freighter Gordon Lightfoot.
- Dungeons & Dragons manuals specifically have content for deciding whether players should choose realistic or exotic names, and how the Dungeon Master should deal with players who don't want their characters' names to be consistent with the types of names the other players choose.
- Otherwise known as the Carlos the Dwarf scenario.
- In 4E, it's stated that most tieflings have "traditional" names like Amnon and Nemeia, while others choose hilariously over-the-top names like Poetry or Despair. Throw in some other races and you can have a party consisting of Wil, Jon, Bree, and Torment, and that's just using the sample names.
- Eberron: Warforged were created without names, only numerical designations. As they realized names make it easier to socialize with other races, they have begun taking some, or having names given to them by people they interact with, but without any fixed pattern, this can be generic name humans/elves/dwarves/some other races would use, a word for a concept they feel fits them (Bulwark, Vanguard, the Lord of Blades), the name of an object, or even words that aren't in common. Some Warforged also retain their numerical designation as they still look for an "ideal" name.
- Forgotten Realms: Naming conventions are different for different races. Notably, halflings tend to have common English names, which stand out as this trope alongside the Nordic-sounding dwarf names and wholly-fantastic elvish names.
- La Notte Eterna: The dwarves may have disappeared centuries ago, but, thanks to their heavy trading with the other races in antiquity, their language heavily influenced the languages of the humans and the Karevi. Thus, in the human-dominated Duchy of Ouin, it's possible to find humans named Elthoras or Kivan alongside more conventional names like Matthew or Howard.
- Exalted has very diverse naming conventions. People in the Realm, namely the nobles, mostly call their children by some (sometimes vaguely Japanese or Chinese-sounding) name made of several meaningless syllables, with a family surname added before the first name (i.e. Cynis Denovah Avaku, Peleps Deled, Tepet Ejava). In the Threshold, however, since there are hundreds upon hundreds of different kingdoms, there are millions of different names, depending on the region. Alongside random alphabet soup, a very common naming convention is Adjective Noun (Harmonious Jade, Magnificent Garden). So you get a circle (party) of people with names like Panther, Dace, Harmonious Jade, Swan and Arianna. Some characters have Names That Unfold Like Lotus Blossoms, such as Fearless in Battle's Face. The above are justified, as they all come from different parts of the world, but still an example of this trope. But then there are characters with random Real Life names thrown in for no apparent reason: Joseph, Anja, Tobias, Lyta... it's a bit jarring.
- Forsooth!: The game encourages mixing in a few common (or silly) English names, regardless of the setting — like how A Midsummer Night's Dream was set in ancient Greece but had a character named Bottom.
- Mage: The Awakening: While not a fantasy setting in the traditional sense, the book "Grimoire of Grimoires" has a grimoire take the form of a black metal/industrial album put together by a band called Schattenbahn. The band's lineup is Blixa Dark, Hellson, Regenfeuer, Doktor Kultur... and Andy.
- Magic: The Gathering: Major characters tend to have names like Urza or Lim-Dûl. This makes names like Peter Douglas (a minor character from Fallen Empires) seem incredibly strange. Occasionally, this is played for laughs. For example, one short story had a demonic dark lord named Vincent who employed a human chef named Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar.
- The Gatewatch itself creates an Aerith and Bob situation. We have normal names such as Chandra, Jace and Liliana alongside more exotic names like Ajani, Nissa and Gideon (whose name is actually Kytheon).
- The crew of the skyship Weatherlight, which was the focus of the story for quite some time, consisted of Tahngarth, Squee, Ertai, Crovax, Mirri, Sisay, Gerrard and Hanna. Sisay is the interesting one; her name does exist in the real world, but it seems to be a predominantly male name.
- Names in Paranoia follow the pattern (first name + security clearance + home sector + clone number), ranging from ordinary first names with an arbitrary suffix (John-R-CQF-2) to silly puns (Howe-R-YAH-3) depending on the GM's preferred style: Straight avoids silly names (they break the mood), Zap revels in them, Classic is somewhere in between.
Theatre
- A Trick to Catch the Old One: Our hero is called Theodorus. Other characters include Pecunious, Walkadine, Onesiphorous, Lancelot, and... Sam, Harry, and Joyce.
Toys
- Beanie Babies run the gamut from cartoony names like "Pinchers the Lobster" or "Squealer the Pig" to common names like "Erin" (an Irish bear), "Scottie" (a Scottish terrier), etc.
- In LEGO's Slizer series, all the characters have elemental or generic, sci-fi sounding names (Torch, Scuba, Amazon, Blaster, Robotops, etc), and then there's Hiker Mike. Granted, he was a fan-created model, but LEGO has approved him into official canon.
Visual Novels
- Most of the names in Ace Attorney are puns or references to their personalities, so a lot of variety turns up. You'll get first names like Miles and Larry mixing with Klavier and Phoenix, and last names like Armstrong and Wright mixing with Eldoon and Cadaverini.
- Hatoful Boyfriend gives the birds mostly normal-sounding Japanese names, with two characters having Punny Names that aren't all that outrageous that are actually fake names - their real names are ordinary Japanese names, and one character going by an intentionally ridiculous fake name, Anghel Higure, that he presumably made up himself thanks to his poor grip on reality (his real name being the ordinary-sounding Akagi Yoshio). The exception is Oko San, whose name roughly translates to 'Mr. Millet' - a cutesy name for a pet bird. This is because Oko San is a fictionalised version of the developer's pet pigeon, Okosan.
- Major/Minor has this in quite a few spots too - you have characters named Konrad, Jade, Max, and Eddie, and then there's names like Endymion, Velasquez, Nagi, Nemi, Rook and Acheron, to name a few. The Player can add to this, given that they can enter in their character's first and last name.
- In Roman's Christmas, there are characters with normal names like Peter and Shawn, fancy nouns like Elegant and Solar, and made-up names like Tsarzn.
- Songs and Flowers has a few normal-sounding names such as Jin, Serena, and Carol, but these actually seem to be the minority. Other characters include Jazz, Noct, Athema, and Noct's cousin Raptillion Erstwhile Minuet III White.
- Steam Prison runs the gamut. A few characters have names that are completely ordinary to English-speaking sensibilities, such as Edward Valentine or Fitzgerald and Warner Evans. Others are recognizable but just slightly askew, like Fin, Ulrik, Cyrus, and Ines. And then on the far end of the scale we have characters named things like Eltcreed, Adage, Glissade, and Keef.
- Tavern Talk: Among the Innkeep's regulars, there are customers named Fable, Caerlin, and Zephir, and also those named Kyle, Archie, and Grace.
- Umineko: When They Cry has this all over the place thanks to the fact that Kinzo felt the need to give his children and grandchildren western names, due to his obsession with Western culture. Outside of the family a number of servants and Kinzo himself have Japanese names. And then you have Battler, which is neither Japanese nor a normal English name. And that doesn't even get into the magical characters, who range from anything to biblical to odd, meaningful names. Just for an example, Umineko contains characters named Rosa, Genji, Lucifer, Lambdadelta and George. Plus, more directly, the main Ushiromiya siblings each (Presumably Rosa too, though her husband is unnamed) have a spouse with a Japanese name: Krauss/Natsuhi, Eva/Hideyoshi, and Rudolf/Kyrie.
Web Animation
- 13 Cards: Characters with normal names like Felix and Gabriel exist alongside characters with names like Kuromaku and Brolly.
- Assassin School: Saturn & Nick Solar, brother and sister.
- Basics in Behavior: Characters have normal names like Claire, Oliver, Edward and then there's Miss Circle, Bubble and ∆lice.
- Most of the contestants in season one of Battle for Dream Island are simply the names of what object they are (some with a "Y" at the end).note When a contestant debut was held in episode 17, the winner was a stickman named David. Season 2 introduced Dora, another stickman-type character with a common real-life name, as well as Ruby, who, despite being named directly after the object she is, also bears a common real-life name. Pen (introduced in Season 1) and Bell (introduced in Season 4) are also named directly after the objects they are, though their names are very similar to ones that are used in real life, specifically Penn (a relatively uncommon last name, but still one that has been used many times throughout history) and Belle (a common first name).
- In Card Players, almost every other character's name sticks out for them to be living in modern New York. However, most of them are actually from different countries. The main characters (in order of the normality of their names) Tom, Elliot, Tabby, Mikira, Ulan...and Yumeria (though her real name is Elena).
- Chadam: Character names range from slightly-uncommon names like Ripley and Sandy, to stranger names like Chadam and Simkin.
- Cheat Commandos has Fightgar, Crackotage, Silent Rip, Firebert, Gunhaver, Flashfight, Ripberger, Foxface, Reinforcements, and Reynold. Reynold is named last as an obvious joke, being the nerdy non-combative Commando.
- In Cow of the Wild, there is a wide variety of names, from Alari, Terok, Balder, and Kahleel to Fang, Midnight, Sammy, and Millie.
- An animation by DarkMatter2525 starts out with a caveman announcing that he is going hunting with Kumba-Kumba the Mammoth Rider, Ragnar the Bear Killer and Bob.
- Dayum: Most of the characters have normal names, like Dylan or Amy, but some have username-type names, like "Dayum1999" or "Josh1".
- Dreamscape has character names like Vladmare, Keela, and Izane, as well as Ethan, Dylan, and Melissa.
- Character names in DSBT InsaniT range from Koden and Killdra to Alex and Bill.
- While most of the characters of Fuwa Fuwa Foof have unorthodox names such as Foof, Giri Giri, Kiri Kiri, Bone Saw, Pinch-Hitter, Dagger Slash, etc., Wanda sticks out as the only character who has a conventional name. The webcomic episode "Fair Play" takes it further with the inclusion of cameos of characters from the DeviantArt webcomic Kids 'n Teenagers (who stand in for generic, but still somewhat plot-relevant civilian characters), who have the mundane names of Aiden, Chris, Ted and Betty.
- G’s Paragate:
- The main characters of "Gold as Brass" are named Thomas and NizQueb.
- The characters from the "Jungle on a Jungle" story arc are an exaggerated example; only one of them, Tracy, has a common name. The other characters' names include E. Andleway, Elder Bouchemhan, Galfriche, and Nobutina. One member of the exploration group, Whit William, has an uncommon first name, but a common last name.
- The main character of the "Acid Burn on a Muddy Ridge" story arc is named Gilroie, and his ex-companion is named Betal, which are both uncommon names. In the arc's third episode, a monkey named Mitch makes his debut appearance.
- In Happy Tree Friends, everybody has a Punny Name... except Russell and Petunia. And even with Petunia, you could probably guess what inspired her name. There is a Stealth Pun in Russell's name as well, since it rhymes with mussel, a sea food Russell likes to eat.
- Helluva Boss: The main characters are named Blitzo (the 'o' is now silent), Moxxie, Loona and... Millie. Stolas's family consists of himself, his daughter Octavia, and his wife Stella. Other demons alternate between the unusual and mundane, like Fizzarolli, Sallie Mae (Millie's sister), Barb Wire, Crimson, Chadwick "Chaz", Vortex, and one imp was even named Dennis.
- Humans-B-Gone!: Arachnids have conventional names like Rose and Danny while insects have names like Sophodra and Empusa.
- In Manga Soprano, there's traditional Japanese names like Kanade, Karin, and Kairi, accompanied by unusual names like Alto, Baccarat, Casino, and Ram. Erica is a name used both in and out of Japan, while Narita, Takeuchi, and Teruyama are surnames.
- The lineup of villains in Meta Runner include Derek Lucks, Belle Fontiere, Evelyn Claythorne and… Sheridan.
- Nigel and Marmalade has names that run the gamut from perfectly normal if a bit folksy (Nigel, Patricia, Kenneth) to the odd but acceptable (Marmalade, Sweetie, Nibbles) to the deliberately awful (Brap Neeflap, Cram Twatley, Krum Nipple).
- The Pink City includes characters named Elain and Dennis alongside characters named Dento, Gop Donsterly and Love Nugget the Heart Eater.
- The Pink Corruption only has two normal names: George and Iris (Which is used on a male character despite being a female name). While the rest of the cast have names like "Dub", "Pentellow", "Squadril", "Cintagon", "Hexagram", "Spheer", "Ajaceare", and "Circubit", to name a few.
- Popocalypse: Our three main characters are named Limpet, Fresno, and Paul.
- Pretty Blood: There are normal names like "Carl", "Lilly", "Ron", "Andy"... then we got the unusual names like "Nappy", "Mangy", "Dede and Dada", "Elma", "Nono", and "Kling", to name a few examples.
- In Ratboy Genius, most of the characters have names that describe who they are essentially (e.g.: Ratboy Genius is a rat-boy who is a genius; Little King John is a little king; then there's Green Monster, Happyman, Very Tall Friend, Mr. Big Arms, The Big Fish Boss...). Some character names are simply absurd (e.g.: Summer Solstice Baby; The Hoo-Hoos). Then we have Fred, George, Sue, Clyde, and Bob.
- Red vs. Blue has an odd, downright comedic name on each of the title's teams: Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Lopez and Donut are the Reds; and the Blues, Church, Tucker, and Caboose (even later additions Tex, Sister and Washington don't seem as weird). It gets even more bizarre considering Donut and Caboose's first names are utterly unremarkable (Franklin and Michael, respectively.)
- RWBY: Remnant is an eclectic mixture of people with names from various different cultures or words in various languages, and some from none at all. This includes characters with traditional names such as Ruby, Blake or Nora, and characters with names based on recognisable languages or mythological beings, such as Weiss (German for 'white'), Jaune (French for 'yellow') and Pyrrha (a name borrowed by Achilles). However, the Beacon headmaster's name is Ozpin, a made-up name reflecting that the character's inspiration comes from the the Wizard in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz whose name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs (O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D.). The in-universe justification for the variety of names is that the world experienced a terrible global war from which freedom of expression has become one of the planet's most cherished gifts... something Ozpin's name mysteriously does not conform to.
- The cast of Sakura the Angel Sailer God comprises of Sakura, Nigi, Shibo, Kojo, Storm, Gan... and Fred.
- Salad Fingers has characters named Harry and Roger. But it also has characters named Bartholomew Degryse.
- SCP Animated - Tales from the Foundation has pretty standard character names like Amelia, Molly, Lawrence and so on. But then there's the director of the Ethics Committee, Zolgamax Jones.
- SparkTales: A dub-induced example. It manifests in the following ways:
- In Lisa's stories, everyone else except Noah, Madison, and Mia may have their Japanese names intact. In Misaki's stories, the reverse occurs — everyone else except Daiki, Sakura, and Aya may have their names dubbed into English ones.
- The main characters and some one-offs have common names, but in cases where everyone else's name is dubbed into an English one, there's a chance these may be uncommon ones, like Eamon, Zabel, or Audra.
- Sometimes, this is averted in Misaki's stories when the antagonists' punny names are dubbed into more conventional Japanese names.
- Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers and Guards N' Retards feature the videogame guards known as Chris and SwagMaster696969696969 (Or "Swag" for short). The former also has Mario and Luigi coexisting with Bowser, Wario, and Waluigi, but has part of its main cast SMG4, Meggy, Saiko, Tari, Fishy Boopkins, Melony, and Bob.
- Symbolics: A majority of the Symbolics have some rather strange-sounding names like "Acie", "Flummet", "Jaji", "Droprat", "Nick-Le", and "Voovaa" to name a few. But there are a few with more human-like names, such as "Charly" and "Gracie".
- Toon Turf: The Runkey family consists of parents Robert and Rhonda, their elder son Jordan, their infant daughter Molly… and their younger son Rigmond, or Riggy for short.
- Weebl & Bob
- Wolf Song: The Movie has characters with original names like Zar and Alador, characters named after concepts like Cobalt, Blaze and Arrow and then traditional names like Kara and Damien. And basically the entire cast are wolves (although Kara and Alador start off as dogs (it makes sense in context ok))
Web Original
- In general, any online community where some people refer to themselves by their real names, and others are only known by their pseudonym. How long they've spent together, how comfortable they are with each other, and their level of preferred privacy factor heavily into it. Some people may start off being known only by their pseudonyms, but switch to their real names once they've known the rest of the group long enough.
- Austrailiangamer.com.au and Game Damage's Matt, Yug, and Yahtzee. Yeah, that Yahtzee.
- The main characters of the Clark Saga
: Conneticut Clark and Malfina the Demon Witch.
- Very common in Darwin's Soldiers. Characters with names like Neku or Dr. James Zanasiu interact with people like Dr. Josephine Smithson and Dr. Rudyard Shelton.
- On the Livejournal roleplaying community Drama Drama Duck, Delirium has mentioned having two fish: Humphrey Finkleton the 75th, and his daughter, Bob. It's in character for her.
- The convicts from Einsteinian Roulette have names that range from Maurice, Thomas and Jim to Feyri, Thrak and Charro.
- Fire Emblem on Forums: Different roleplays in this series have different levels of enforcement of this specific trope, ranging from averting it entirely to encouraging it with the different cultures present in the settings.
- The Gaming Beaver likes to give his Jurassic World creatures funny nicknames: his Pteranodon is "Pecky Eyses", his Dimetrodon is "Unicorn Wizard", his Diplocaulus is "Flaffy", his Archelon is... Dave.
- From The Gaming Lemon's Assassin's Creed Syndicate funtage, we get this:
"Me, Sir Big-Toot Erdun Lemon Trout, and my sidekick, Watson."
- A running gag in Nigahiga's early "How to be" videos. "Hello, my name is Hanatewakusoshiseotadashiteteriyakisuzukihondacivic!" "Hello, my name is Bob.
- In The Noedolekcin Archives, you've got characters named Gabore and Hypsypops. And then, you've got Kirk.
- Pokemon Universe RP: Seeing as the moderators aren't too critical of what you name your character and anybody can play with somebody else, it's inevitable.
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum: The PPC's agents come from all over the multiverse, creating an understandable disparity in names. The Department of Mary Sues alone has agents whose names include the likes of Brenda, Diocletian, Martin, and Evangeline von Lilith.
- In Reflets d'Acide, we have characters named Zarakaï the Dwarf, Enoriel the Elf... and Roger the Bartender.
- Rise of the Believers has quite a bit of it. Understandable when you consider that characters come from all over the world and beyond.
- Rock Hard Gladiators: With an Ensemble Cast of hundreds, if not thousands, there are bound to be a few unusual names that pop up. Indeed, the names range from conventional-sounding (Jade, Chuck, Andre, Murph), to a bit strange or exotic but still at least sounding within reason (Yupia,note Magus, Jomm, WeiEn), to Meaningful Names (often based on their weapons and powers, like Yoyo, Foxtail, Munch, and Umbrella), to just downright bizarre (Nhazul, Oxob, Garo, KiXx, and FLLFFLnote ).
- The Saga of Pretzel Bob: In this case though, it's Seraphoth and Bob.
- The heroes from the Something Awful: Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions include Joey, Miriam, Kensington, Minerelle, Asalynn, Bananaramawicz, and Kodrinschreiner. This isn't even getting into NPC names, such as Thraxidelantis, which is embarrassing enough that Syrg just shortens it to "Thraxi" after a few jokes at his expense.
- This comes up in Survival of the Fittest a fair bit, with students supposedly hailing from America having bizarre names (although occasionally justified if the character has immigrated). Examples include names like Rais, Shoar, and Venka amongst Adams, Alans and Helenas.
- In Time to Shoot Down The Moon and Sentinel, a German scientist is named Vier Sackingen. It means four even though he is the second in his family.
Vier: My older brother is called Jacob, my younger sister is called Lilia, I'm called No. 4. Not even 2. Oh, and the actual 4th kid, my younger brother is called Elwin, after general Rommel.
Web Videos
- Berserk Abridged: The original Berserk has some examples that are somewhat easy to overlook (Guts, Pippen, Corkus, Zodd and Caska among others, mixing it up with Julius, Charlotte, and Griffith), but hbi2k turned this trope on its head for his abridged series when he went ahead and named the snake baron Phil.
Phil: Well, maybe I don't need a scary name full of 'z's and 'x's to be intimating!
- Two of the four main characters of Blocklanta have the names "Dash" and "Rico", while the other two have common names such as "Chloe" and "Brady".
- In the Classic Game Room review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers for the Game Boy, host Mark Bussler forgets the name of the turtles and names them "Leonardo", "Donatello", "Mussolini" and "Bob".
- Critical Role's characters all come from wildly different backgrounds, so name disparity is bound to happen.
- From the first campaign, we have Grog, Keyleth, Scanlan, the twins Vex'ahlia and Vax'ildan, Pike, Tiberius, Taryon... and Percy.
- From the second campaign, Caleb, Beauregard, and later additions Kingsley and Luc have normal human names, Molly and Yasha straddle the line (Molly is a Gender-Blender Name and short for Mollymauk, Yasha is a name that is somewhat common in Russian but not in English), and the rest of the party consists of Caduceus, Fjord, Jester, Nott (whose real name is the slightly more normal Veth), and Essek.
- From the third campaign, Imogen, Ashton, Dorian, and Fearne have normal (if slightly uncommon) human names, Braius, Chetney, Laudna, and Orym have fantasy names, and then there's their final party member, Fresh Cut Grass (who is usually nicknamed F.C.G. or Letters).
- Demo Reel has Donnie, Rebecca, Quinn, Carl and... Tacoma.
- Dimension 20:
- The Bad Kids of Fantasy High consist of Adaine Abernant, Riz Gukgak, Figueroth Faeth, Fabian Seacaster, Gorgug Thistlespring... and Kristen Applebees.
- The Seven is split between normal names like Sam, Zelda, and Danielle and fantasy names like Antiope and Ostentatia.
- The Ravening War's main party contains Amangeaux, Karna, Raphaniel and Colin.
- Cloudward, Ho! has relatively normal names like Daisuke, Maxwell, and Montgomery exist alongside Longspot Gotch, Lord Kensington Mordesctershirenote and Oroborous Codswallop.
- The six characters that have been given proper names in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared thus far are Tony, Roy, Michael, Malcolm, Colin and... Shrignold.
- In Epic Rap Battles of History, Pablo Picasso invokes this during his battle with Bob Ross, by rapping out his entire Overly Long Name and then:
"Back to you... Bob."
- A few examples from Game Grumps, usually through in-game naming systems:
- The Jeopardy! two-parter has Nixon (Arin's character), Dixon (Jon's character) and Larry (the AI character).
- From The Price Is Right: Eva, Jon, Jay, and Sopojkkk.
- During the intro clip to episodes, the on-screen text introduces the duo as "Egoraptor" and "Danny"
- Their three legendary bird Pokemon are named Blupl, Lomster, and Greg.
- In their review of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Arin tries to make a point after finally beating Silver and mentions a made up game called "God of War: Legend of Greg" which sends Jontron into an extended laughing fit.
- And on Steam Train, when Dan and Ross are playing Organ Trail, their party consists of Quat, Cuat, Qwat, and Ross.
Ross: I think they're spelled right. Yes. Continue.
- Matthew Santoro's clones are named Hugo, Eugene, Lorrenzo... and Big Shine.
- Most prominent Minecraft servers and series, in their classic mixture of roleplay and Let's Play, feature both content creators who prefer to be called by their online aliases (often the Aeriths) and those who prefer to be called by their real-life names (usually the Bobs). This goes double with the fact that most of their roleplay characters are The Danza, prompting fans and later, even some of the creators themselves to differentiate characters (c!) and content creators (cc!) with tags on social media.
- On the Dream SMP, people who prefer to be called their online alias include Dream, Sapnap, Bad, Foolish, and Quackity, and on the other end are people called Tommy, Jack, Connor, Wilbur, and Phil. This also applies in the spin-off series Tales From the SMP occasionally, with characters named Jackie, Levi, Edward, and Laggius co-existing in the episode "The Pit".
- The Empires SMP has rulers named Katherine, Joey, and Scott exist alongside ones named Sausage, fWhip, and Pix. Its sister series by virtue of creator overlap and Canon Welding, the Afterlife SMP, doesn't have it as bad as other SMPs, as most members of the ALSMP either go by their real names, or, like Gem, have online aliases that can plausibly be used as actual names, but fWhip and Sausage are also on that server.
- On Hermitcraft, there are Hermits named Stress, Impulse, and Hypno playing alongside Pearl, Cleo, and Joe.
- Life SMP shares a great creator overlap with Empires and Hermitcraft, which naturally results in this trope being in effect: those who prefer to be called their online aliases include Bdubs, Etho, Tango, Mumbo, and Grian, and on the other end are names like Joel, Lizzie, Jimmy, and Martyn.
- In the Outsiders SMP, the characters first found in Clearing A include Guts, Mohwee, Rasbi, and Spidey… and then there's Graecie (pronounced the same as "Gracie") and Owen.
- SMPLive: Compare names like Connor and Josh to the likes of Altrive, Beef, and Krinios.
- On SMPEarth, this is best exemplified with the Antarctic Empire, which consists of Phil, Pete, and Technoblade.
- Played for Laughs in Needs More Gay; Rantasmo reviews a gay porn parody of The Ring where none of the characters have names, so he makes some up for them. Note that all of them are men.
"Naomi goes to investigate the other two friends, who I'll call... Cedric and Boniva."
- The usual cast of OneyPlays consists of Chris, Julian and DingDong.
- Petscop: Some of the pets have strange names like Pen, Wavey, Roneth, and Toneth...but then you have Amber and Randice.
- Randy Rainbow, who posts political parodies of show tunes, lampshaded this trope in a parody of "Camelot" about then-Senator Kamala Harris, saying plainly "her husband's name is Doug".
- The Runaway Guys:
- The TRG Colosseum charity livestream featured a Dungeons & Dragons game with protagonists Mittens, Methanthor, Feista Ki... plus Barry and Brock (the Rock). Then there's Steve the Dragon (who is also Brock the Rock) and Barry's ex-wife, Brenda.
- The crew themselves with their real names, though most of them lean towards the Bob side: Jon (short for Jonathan)note , Tim (short for Timothy), Tom (short for Thomas), Carlos, Jack, Stephen and his wife Mallory, and Adriana. Aerith names include Jules, Emile (short for Emiliano, which would lean more towards Bob in Spanish), Risa (abbreviated to the more Bob-sounding Reese), and Shauntelle.
- In Twitch Plays Pokémon, a Pokémon will either be nicknamed, and end up with a very bizarre and usually unpronounceable jumble of letters, or it will be left with its original name. The Mob typically gives any Pokemon with a major role a nickname based on said jumble of letters.
- The Championship team in Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal has, on the one hand, LazorGator, Breakfast Burrito, and METAL GEAR, and on the other hand, Brian, Katie, and Ace.
- In terms of actual protagonists, we have Red and AJDNNW.
- Since Whitepine for the most part uses the usernames of actors as character names, there are plenty of unique names like Serapter, Zombie, and Clownpierce. Then there are ordinary names like Ivory, Ross or Dev.